Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games
Title card used in the videos
Genre	Video game culture
Directed by	Anita Sarkeesian
Presented by	Anita Sarkeesian
Theme music composer	Matt Joynt, Nathan Sandberg
Country of origin	USA
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	14
Production
Producer(s)	Jonathan McIntosh
Release
Original network	FeministFrequency (2009) YouTube (2009–present)
Original release	Tropes vs Women in Video Games March 7, 2013 – present
External links
Official website
Production website

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is a YouTube video series created by Anita Sarkeesian examining gender tropes in video games. The series was financed via crowdfunding, and came to widespread attention when its Kickstarter campaign triggered a wave of sexist harassment against Sarkeesian.

In 2009, Sarkeesian started her website Feminist Frequency with the intention of creating feminist media criticism accessible to the younger generation. In 2011 she collaborated with the feminist magazine Bitch to create a YouTube video series for her site titled "Tropes vs. Women", which examined tropes in film, television and other popular media that she believes reinforce damaging stereotypes about women. After the success of "Tropes vs. Women", Sarkeesian began planning a follow-up series. In 2012, video game studio Bungie invited her to speak about developing strong female characters; the engagement was well received and inspired her to think more about games. Sarkeesian determined that some tropes she planned to discuss in her new series, such as the "Damsel in Distress", were particularly pervasive in video games, and decided to devote the second series specifically to games.

In May 2012, Sarkeesian announced she would crowdfund her series on "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" through Kickstarter. She launched the Kickstarter project on May 17, 2012, with an initial goal of $6,000 to produce five videos of 10–20 minutes in length. The project reached its target in less than 24 hours, and Sarkeesian promptly set a series of "stretch" goals to fund additional installments.

After the close of the Kickstarter, Sarkeesian decided to redevelop her concept for the series, writing that the additional funding allowed her to "expand the scope, scale and production values of the project". On January 2013 Sarkeesian launched a Tumblr web page called "Bits of Tropes Vs. Women in Games" previewing samples of the first video.